“The Lord spoke to Moses: ‘When you take a census of the Israelites to register them, each of the men must may a ransom for his life to the Lord as they are registered. Then no plague will come on them as they are registered. Everyone who is registered must pay half a shekel according to the sanctuary shekel (twenty gerahs to the shekel). This half shekel is a contribution to the Lord. Each man who is registered, twenty years old or more, must give this contribution to the Lord. The wealthy may not give more and the poor may not give less than half a shekel when giving the contribution to the Lord to atone for your lives. Take the atonement price from the Israelites and use it for the service of the tent of meeting. It will serve as a reminder for the Israelites before the Lord to atone for your lives.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the most awkward things for many preachers to talk about is money. The reason for this is not simply because of a fear of stepping on their people’s toes. The reason is that it is hard to address the subject without its feeling or seeming very self-serving. After all, the preacher’s salary comes from the church. His telling the people to give can come across like little more than his reminding them to pay him. No one wants that. The next part of the tabernacle cycle here is the description of an annual financial offering the people were to give. Let’s talk through what we see here and how we should see it through a new covenant lens.

There are several different things going on in this passage, so let’s see if we can touch on all of them. Let’s start with the vegetables first. What on earth does God mean by declaring that the people are to give this offering so that no plague falls on them and that this money is a ransom for their lives?

The hard answer is that we’re not totally sure. One of the principles to use when we aren’t totally sure what to do with a particular passage is to let Scripture be our lens for interpreting Scripture. These means we need to ask about other censuses that are mentioned in the Old Testament narrative. The most infamous census is the one David demanded in 2 Samuel 24. That one was not sanctioned by God and David was punished pretty severely for it. Why? Because David was trying to assess his own greatness rather than relying on God’s. On the other hand, we find God directing a couple of censuses in the book of Numbers (whose title in Hebrew is much more exciting: “Into the Wilderness…”).

It would seem from this brief survey, that the purpose of the census in question matters. If God explicitly directed the people to do it, that was one thing. But if they chose to do it themselves in order to better grasp how strong they were militarily, that was another. In the latter case, the people were looking to their own strength instead of seeking to rely on God’s. In these instances, God was going to bring judgment on the people for their faithlessness. In order to avoid this judgment, the people needed to pay a ransom to Him. They could give this offering in place of their own lives. This could be why God starts here by assuming a census has already been taken rather than commanding for one to be taken. If this is a kind of contingency command to help the people avoid trouble from future unwise decisions, that makes a bit more sense out of what we see here.

That’s the hard part. Let’s turn to some more practical issues we find in these verses. This understanding of the potential military purpose of the census in view here helps us make sense out of the total lack of mention of women here. The gut reaction from a modern reader might be something like, “What? Were women not considered valuable enough to have their lives ransomed by God?” But the point here wasn’t ransom of every person in the nation. It was to assess the fighting capabilities of the people. Women would not have been put into combat situations. That’s actually a broad historical norm. But for a few exceptions and modern military trends in a handful of nations, women have never been intentionally put into combat situations. Because of their vital and unique national role of bearing and raising children so that the nation has a demographic future, women have been generally exempted from combat.

There’s another reason for the lack of mention of women here. Because of the nature of the culture of ancient Israel, most men 20 and older would have been married. And married couples had children but for tragic exceptions. An intentionally childless couple was not something anyone would have even understood then. That is still the case in modern Israel, by the way, which is one of the few Westernized nations in the world with a national birthrate that sits strongly above replacement level. Nations that embrace progressive and naturalistic values tend to have fewer children. Take from that what you will, but if a particular worldview leads a majority of the people who hold it to essentially give up on the future of their nation, I would argue that it is not a morally or politically beneficial worldview. In any event, this census would have been a count of the number of families, not merely men, in the nation.

Another idea God was attempting to inculcate in the minds of the people was an equality of value among the people. Most cultures have placed more value on the lives of some citizens than others. In the Fallout series from Amazon, one of the positions of Vault-Tec, the evil corporation that was responsible for the terrible state of the world, that was clearly intended to be deserving of our moral scorn, was their rubric for deciding who would be given access to the vaults so they could survive a nuclear holocaust. They chose people they determined could contribute the most to a future society. People who were poor or who didn’t possess a set of skills deemed beneficial were left to fend for themselves.

Today we tend to place more weight on the lives of people who are rich and famous. Celebrities generate obsessive interest from fans seeking to live vicariously through them. We assume that people who are rich are experts in all kinds of fields that have nothing to do with the source of their wealth, an assumption put on display by our willingness to give them forums to opine on all sorts of political and cultural topics about which they have no expertise.

In Israel’s census, every citizen’s life was declared to be of equal value. Every household was to contribute to it equally. The value was set pretty low. Rich people couldn’t give more to it, and poor people couldn’t give less. This mandated equality of contribution was important not just for the value it communicated, but also because of the purpose of the offering. The offering (which could probably be more accurately identified as a tax) was to be used to maintain the tabernacle. Because everyone was allowed to give a single, set amount, no one could claim ownership or rights to more of the tabernacle’s ministry than anyone else. It also prevented freeloaders. No one could think, “Well, my neighbor gave three times as much as I did, so I don’t have to worry about it.” Everyone was to contribute equally because everyone was able to benefit equally.

This brings us to one last issue which takes us back to where we started. Ministry takes money. It takes money to produce the kinds of services that a ministry produces. If you are going to have someone who is available all the time to provide a set of services, it is only fair and right for that person to be compensated for their time. It is only just that they be allowed to provide for their family. This is an idea the apostle Paul talked about in the first part of 1 Corinthians 9. If you are going to have a space where that ministry is going to be done, the space has to be maintained. It is only right that those who benefit from the ministry that happens in that space contribute to its maintenance. We see this idea communicated several times over the rest of the Old Testament narrative.

The reason we talk about money in the church is not that, though. The reason we talk about money in the church is because the Scriptures talk about money. A lot. Jesus talked about money more than just about any other subject than judgment and Hell. And the reason Jesus spent so much time talking about money is that it can so easily get ahold of our hearts and hold us captive to its wants and desires. Practicing the spiritual discipline of sacrificial generosity is the best and most effective way to keep that from happening. You will never be owned by something you voluntarily and sacrificially give away.

It remains nonetheless true, however, that if you are connected with a local church (and if you are a follower of Jesus, you should be connected with a local church), the best place to direct that sacrificial generosity is to your church. It is right and proper for members to be invested in the functioning and maintenance of their church body. This includes maintaining facilities in such a way that they are inviting and comfortable for members and guests alike. It includes providing income for staff who have dedicated themselves (and their families because that’s how that works) to serving in the church in a way that goes well above and beyond the norm. It includes cooperating together to engage in kingdom-advancing projects outside the church in the form of missions of various kinds. All three of those matter, but none of them can happen without the sacrificial generosity of all the people who are connected with the body. So, if you are connected with a local body of Christ, give generously to that body. You both need it.